WASHINGTON—
Donald Trump
will be joined in Beijing this week by executives from more than two dozen U.S. companies planning to announce trade deals they say will be worth billions of dollars.

But that alone won’t make it an economic policy success. Deals with a confined number of companies—involving soybeans, airplanes and natural gas among other products—are unlikely to dent the U.S. goods trade deficit with China that Mr. Trump has vowed to drain: a vat of red ink worth $347 billion last year, and on track to get even bigger in 2017.

Instead, Mr. Trump’s first trip as president to the country he has branded “an economic enemy” could raise more questions than it answers about his plans for tackling an issue he placed prominently on his campaign economic agenda.

Mr. Trump has tried to check other items off that list: moving to cut taxes, rewrite Obamacare, cut regulation and curb immigration. He is overhauling trade deals with other countries—Mexico, Canada, South Korea—with bilateral trade surpluses much smaller than China’s. As for China trade, there has so far been talk, but little action or clarity on administration strategy. One example was no follow-through on threats to label China a currency manipulator.

Mr. Trump’s early approach has, in fact, looked a lot like
George W. Bush’s
and
Barack Obama’s
. During President
Xi Jinping’s
April U.S. visit, the two leaders launched a “Comprehensive Economic Dialogue” similar to bilateral cabinet-level committees meeting regularly over the past decade.

The goal: to hash out trade tensions through conversation, and to make regular joint announcements of Chinese market-opening measures, keeping momentum for liberalization.

The half-dozen China pledges unveiled with Trump aides in May were largely incremental, or recycled versions of earlier broken promises. The July dialogue broke down with no new agreements. No further rounds have been scheduled and Mr. Xi is instead tightening the central government’s grip on the economy. Mr. Trump’s aides say don’t look for joint market-opening announcements this week.

One senior White House official casts the dialogues as a Chinese “rope-a-dope” strategy the Trump administration will no longer fall for—forums for offering surface tweaks staving off pressure for more systemic changes to China’s mercantilist industrial policies. That is an allusion to
Muhammad Ali’s
tactic of tricking opponents into tiring themselves out with ineffective punches, allowing the boxer to move in for a knockout.

The pugilistic reference underscores the Trump administration’s vows for tougher enforcement. The president won’t make headlines on that front this week either. He touts his friendly relationship with Mr. Xi, and isn’t expected to risk that chemistry with mid-summit threats.

What remains uncertain is when, if ever, Mr. Trump will move on any of these items. Internal divisions have stalled action. His broken promise to curb steel and aluminum imports by summer incensed the Democrats he wants to join what administration officials call a “new coalition” on trade.

“President Trump has been nothing more than a paper tiger,” Senate Minority Leader
Charles Schumer
said in late October, announcing plans to block Trump trade nominees until import curbs are implemented.

China trade has fallen behind other administration priorities.

Mr. Trump doesn’t want to jeopardize cooperation from Mr. Xi in tackling North Korea’s nuclear program. Pressed Thursday on Fox News about whether he would announce a trade crackdown, Mr. Trump replied: “you have to understand something very important—we have a problem called North Korea.”

The Nafta and Korea fights have raised tensions with economic allies who might otherwise join an effort to restrain Beijing. The 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal that Mr. Trump had spiked, was similarly aimed at encircling China with a regional bloc governed by American-style commercial rules.

Mr. Trump shows no second thoughts about TPP. But his aides say his Asia trip—including four nations other than China—will highlight a commitment for a U.S.-led regional economic alliance in a different form.

That is vital for any attempt to pressure Beijing, says
Scott Kennedy,
director of the project on Chinese business and political economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank.

“If the U.S. does not prioritize the challenges with China and more effectively work with its allies,” says Mr. Kennedy, “any unilateral action is likely to leave the U.S., not China, isolated.”